


sticks and stones

by rangerhitomi



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Bullying, Canon Compliant, Child Aichi, Gen, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 00:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15569883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: For years he let them beat him, not letting a word escape his mouth. If he said anything, they would hurt him more. If he was quiet, maybe they would give up.So he endured it, silently, alone.





	sticks and stones

**Author's Note:**

> content warning for bullying, including physical abuse of a child by his peers. this is canon-compliant but if the content is triggering or uncomfortable, I don't want you to have to endure it. (I have other vanguard fics you could read that might be a lot easier to handle; this is a rough subject.)

He was six the first time it happened.

Maybe he should have been more guarded, maybe he should not answer every question in class or be overly formal with his peers. Being polite came naturally to him; it was simply how he had been raised.

Regardless, it hurt when his classmate shoved him off the swing and kicked him until he crawled out of the way, clutching his stomach.

 _Why did you do that,_ he whispered, but his classmate turned his back, sat on the vacant swing, and ignored him as he cried.

* * *

 

It happened again the next day, except now there were three of them.

 _Why_ , he asked again, and this time his classmate scoffed at him.

 _This is my swing,_ was the response.

But it wasn't, and he knew that, and his classmate knew that; the swings were for all the children. Whoever got there first got to play on it. Those were the unspoken rules of the playground.

He looked around for a teacher. Surely they could set this right.

 _If you tattle on me,_ his classmate warned, _I'll punch you._

But he told a teacher anyway.

* * *

 

Three days passed in relative peace. Sometimes his other peers would stare at him. The suspected student's friends left him alone, but they cast him dark looks every time the teacher wasn't looking, and all he could do was swallow and turn his attention back to his schoolwork.

He couldn't focus.

* * *

 When his classmate came back, he kept his promise.

 _I told you, Sendou Aichi_ , he snarled, punching him in the chest, _I told you I'd do it._

Aichi fell to the ground, clutching his chest. _Stop, please_ , he whimpered, but his classmate landed a blow to his stomach, kicked him in the ribs, pulled him up by his hair.

His scream was cut off by a dirty tissue shoved in his mouth. He gagged, tears spilling down his face.

_You're not going to tell again, are you?_

Wide eyed and in more pain than he'd ever been before, Aichi shook his head. His tormentor let go of his hair and Aichi fell to the ground. He reached up to pull the tissue out and threw up.

 _Quit being a sissy,_ he said, and spat at Aichi before walking away.

Some girls nearby watched, and said nothing.

* * *

When he came home, he forced a polite _I'm home_ , pulled off his shoes, and trudged to the bathroom. Gingerly, he peeled off his jacket and his shirt and stared at the purple-and-yellow bruises blossoming on his ribs and stomach. He bit his lip and turned so he could see his back. They'd torn his skin there, probably from shoving him into the ground. His head was killing him, too.

Carefully, he pulled out a bottle of peroxide and a few cotton balls from the medicine cabinet, splashed the peroxide onto the ball, squeezed his eyes shut, and counted to three before dabbing at the injury.

A tiny grunt of pain escaped his throat as he worked; he bit his lip to hold it in. He had to clean it; his mother had taught him that when he'd skinned his knee in the past. He moved onto his arms next, scraped up from being shoved on the ground. Once the shock of this new pain subsided, he covered them with adhesive bandages.

Breathing hurt. He took short, staggered breaths to minimize it. Pulling his shirt back over his head, he started to leave the bathroom, but glanced back at the trash bin. Bloodied cotton balls and bandage wrappers would raise suspicion if Emi or his mother saw them.

He gathered the trash and took it outside, to his mother's delight.

He couldn't do anything about the pain except take a couple of painkillers.

But sooner or later his mother would notice the dwindling supply, so he could only take them when it hurt too much to breathe.

* * *

 It stopped being only the one classmate. Others joined in now; perhaps fascinated by the prospect of knowing what it was like to hit another human being, or maybe just caught up in the novelty of it.

A few of them did karate. All Aichi could do to protect himself was place his hands over his face. A fruitless gesture; they were young but not stupid. No one ever hit his face, so the adults never saw his injuries.

Eventually, he stopped crying in front of them. Maybe, if he didn't react, they would move on to other things. He would pray for it to stop, eyes squeezed shut so he didn't have to look at their faces, so he didn't have to see the leg before the foot landed a blow in his stomach.

But the months dragged on and still they hit him.

* * *

 Some mornings, he hurt so much he couldn't get out of bed. He pretended to be sick and his mother would take him hot soup and water. When she left him, he would cry.

He wanted to go to school, but he was scared, sometimes so much that he would throw up from the nerves. His mother heard and thought he had a stomach bug. He refused to go to the doctor. They would make him take off his shirt, and then his mother would know what was happening to him.

* * *

 He sat outside the classroom on a stiff-backed chair as his mother talked with his teacher. He couldn't hear all of the conversation, but he heard enough.

There was nothing wrong with his schoolwork, his teacher said, but he didn't connect with any of the other children. He was timid and flinched whenever anyone talked to him; he stuttered through reading out loud and wouldn't make eye contact. He'd drop whatever he was holding if someone broke the silence. He didn't want to go outside to play. When it came time for group activities, he begged the teacher to let him be on his own.

His mother started crying.

Aichi cried, too.

* * *

 Every afternoon he would hurry home as fast as his bruised and aching body would allow. If he lingered too long, they would drag him off.

But he was always afraid they would follow him home, and he couldn't risk it. So he took the long way, through winding streets, past shops and parks, and tried hard to be around people just in case.

One day, they'd followed him almost to the park, and had gone too far. They'd surrounded him, like normal, and took turns holding and hitting him. He didn't know why, anymore.

Someone hit him too hard and he fell over; instead of falling on his back, he slid with his cheek to the ground, tearing the skin just below his left eye. With one last kick to his chest, they scattered, leaving him lying on the concrete.

His walk home was agonizingly slow. Every step he took sent pain jolting through his back and chest. Walking too fast would cause him to breathe harder, which he couldn't. So he dragged himself along, clutching walls for support. He'd placed a bandage over the scrape on his cheek but none of the adults he passed on the street did more than glance at him before moving on.

He felt invisible.

When he ran out of walls to support his aching body, he shuffled along, staring at his feet. Every so often he would stumble, but miraculously he didn't fall over.

Until he rounded a corner and found himself on the ground again.

_Oh! I'm sorry!_

It was a boy, maybe a year older than him, with a mess of brown hair and neatly kept clothes. He squatted down, hands on his knees, as he surveyed Aichi.

_Did you lose a fight?_

Aichi couldn't respond. He looked away from the boy, but couldn't muster the energy to climb to his feet.

The boy tilted his head. His expression softened from curiosity to concern.

_Were you bullied?_

Aichi's body shook as he looked back up. He opened his mouth to say _no, it's nothing_ but only a barely audible sigh escaped his lips.

Before he knew it, the boy had grabbed his hand and pulled him to the bench, setting a deck of cards between them.

It was Aichi's first exposure to Vanguard.

But he couldn't stay. The sun was starting to set, and if he showed up too late with a bandage on his face, his mother would suspect something.

He'd always been so good at hiding his pain.

The boy was undeterred by Aichi's stammered excuses, and he held out a card.

_Here, you can have this._

It was a card, called Blaster Blade. Even though Aichi knew nothing about Vanguard, he could tell it wasn't any normal card; there was something different about this one. He tried to push it back at the boy.

_Imagine yourself as strong as him._

Aichi couldn't, because he could never be strong.

_Just imagine it. Imagination... will become your strength._

* * *

 Aichi never knew the boy's name. Sometimes, when he managed to get away from his classmates early, he would cut through the park in the hopes of seeing him again. He did, for a few weeks; the boy played Vanguard on park benches with a couple of other boys. Every day after school, there he was.

They smiled and laughed. It must be nice to have friends to laugh with.

Aichi never worked up the nerve to approach them. He didn't know why, other than that he was afraid the other boys wouldn't want to play with him. Or maybe the boy was just being nice when he gave Aichi Blaster Blade. Either way, he was content to hide and watch them, and he thought about making his own Vanguard deck so that maybe he could play with them sometime.

One day, the boy wasn't there anymore.

* * *

 It went on for years.

Sometimes, when it hurt so much he wished everything would just end, Aichi would take Blaster Blade from a drawer on his desk and try to  _imagine._

Sometimes he could pretend he could hear Blaster Blade assuring him that he, too, could be strong. 

It gave him some comfort. 

* * *

 When he came home with scratches on his elbows and knees and cheek, he would pass it off to his mother as an accident. He tripped up the stairs, or over a rock in the park. She was concerned about his clumsiness, but never suspected anything more.

But he couldn't pass off the black eye.

He tried to bypass his mother and head straight to his room, calling back that he wasn't hungry when she asked if he wanted a snack.

She called him back to the kitchen to ask him to take Emi out of her high chair while she finished making dinner.

He swallowed and walked into the kitchen.

The spoon she held clattered to the floor as she screamed. Aichi's body seized up as she threw herself at him, wrapping him in her arms as she sobbed into his shoulder.

 _What happened to you?_ she cried.

He couldn't tell her, but he didn't have to.

* * *

 _We didn't know_ , the school said, but they always said that to avoid getting in trouble for ignoring bullying. Nothing like that ever happened at  _our_ school. Aichi's mother pulled him out of school and enrolled him in a private school across town.

His new classmates weren't kind to him, but they weren't unkind, either. They barely acknowledged him most of the time. But that was fine. They didn't hit him. Not as much.

He went to school, came home, and did it all over again the next day. And again. And again. And again...

* * *

 In middle school, he met the boy again. Kai Toshiki. Except now, he was different. Colder. Harsher. Whatever had happened to him in the years between had changed him to an almost unrecognizable person.

But he softened, over time, for Aichi, and they grew to respect and care for each other. And Aichi grew stronger. More confident. Despite the struggles and despair of Psyqualia and the Asia Circuit and Link Joker... he had friends now, friends who cared about him.

Friends who loved him.


End file.
